Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke to more than 100 students and faculty members at Harvard University’s Carl W. Walter Amphitheater Thursday about the need for America to develop an efficient healthcare model for the 21st century.

As part of the Tosteson Lecture Series — Harvard’s ongoing health policy seminars — Gingrich cited policies from his 2004 book Saving Lives, Saving Money: Transforming Health and Healthcare in the 21st Century, including a call for universal health care that would focus on disease prevention and maintaining high health standards rather than treatment of preventable diseases, such as childhood obesity and diabetes.

Gingrich complained that health care is “maximizing inefficiency, and stunningly ineffective,” citing the government’s mishandling of Hurricane Katrina. Yet he acknowledged that tackling health care is an enormous task.

“Health care is 30 times more complicated than even national security,” he said. “It is too complicated for one bill to manage. No administration can manage it, but an administration can cause a migration towards a different direction.”

To initiate such a policy, Gingrich said it is necessary to stimulate competition among health care providers to lower costs and provide power to the private sector.

“What we need is a Travelocity for health care,” said Gingrich, referring to the website Travelocity.com, which allows consumers to shop through prices for airfares.

Gingrich added that consumers are forced to choose health care programs without being aware of all the costs, and that the current health care system is “inefficient, ineffective and obsolete,” while comprising too much of the national budget.

After speaking for under an hour, Gingrich opened the floor to questions. After being asked why his plan was better than former political rival Bill Clinton’s universal health care plan of 1994, he said the issue of health care is too large to fit on one bill, emphasizing the need to privatize the system.

“[Clinton’s 1994 bill] collapsed under its own weight,” he said.

“I thought Gingrich was quite impressive,” said Harvard junior Benny Chang. “He seems to have a good idea about how to solve a serious problem.”

Harvard graduate student Randy Crafter said Gingrich proved he had extensive knowledge of health care.

“He knows a lot about the topic and obviously has a lot of experience with it,” Crafter said. “I would like to see something become of it.”